


Hold Me Fast

by foreverhermit



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Homelessness, M/M, Rating May Change, Roommates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4043500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverhermit/pseuds/foreverhermit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who knew a knife to the leg was such an effective advertisement for a roommate?</p><p>(In which Gwaine's less-than-romantic life on the road lands him in the bed of a beautiful man. And then into his guest bedroom.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey, guys, while the parts of this story surrounding homeless living will be short, if anyone has any reading recommendations on the subject i will gladly accept them. if i offend with this issue, please let me know and i will rectify the situation, as well as apologize. i in no way intend to romanticize or trivialize this experience, merely to explore the modern implications of gwaine's nomadic lifestyle.
> 
> also, like the tags say, both the rating and the relationship (probably the latter more than the former) are subject to change. mostly because i haven't written all of this yet, but i have ideas!
> 
> the title is taken from the song "hopeless wanderer" by the band mumford & sons.
> 
> please enjoy!

Gwaine takes a long wiff of his bag of provisions. It’s dim in the musty basement, the sun setting earlier and earlier with each passing day, and he would rather not waste the batteries in his torch just to check his food supply. His nose can do that well enough for him, thank you very much. And whatever his sense of smell can’t confirm, touch can lend a helping hand. _Literally_.

A bad pun, but Gwaine snickers to himself anyway. No one else is around to laugh or roll their eyes at him, so he might as well enjoy himself for the _absolute joy_ that he is.

Aside from a few apples that have gone soft in places, everything seems fine, nothing to make him sick. Food poisoning is a _bitch_. And Gwaine certainly isn’t going to complain about a couple pieces of bruised fruit. If he was going to complain, it wouldn’t be about that.

He surveys the room again, just to confirm he is in fact alone. He does this as often as he can, a habit born of instinct and well-learned paranoia. He can’t hear anything down here, not from outside, not even the scuffle of rats in the floors above.

Well, it’s still early; the rats are not exactly active yet. They’re like Gwaine in that respect, nocturnal creatures for the most part.

Although perhaps Gwaine is more like them than they are like him—more than he cares to admit. They’re both scavengers, dirty, unwanted, _pests_. And he’s had more than a few people try to... exterminate him.

Yep, he and rats share a few things, a home being one of them, but that still doesn’t mean they’re at all _amiable_ with one another. He’s got his little basement fortified as best he can, having blocked every nook and cranny with whatever forgotten items he could find. When he first arrived, there had been a lot of abandoned bookcases and filing cabinets to barricade with. This building might have been an office or library at some point. There hadn't been much left on the ground floor when he first found and explored the building—not much beyond peeling wallpaper, a shattered window, and grime. The place had been emptied when it was abandoned, but not frantically. Everything had been carefully removed, probably after the mystery business went under or found a new home closer to the business district. They left some items in the basement, either for storage or the things left were unnecessary, stuff that could be done without. Things discarded to collect dust, to be taken in by new owners, or left to rust and rot.

On a bad day, Gwaine supposes he might be a bit like them, too.

Which is a seriously disheartening thought. He _really_ needs to be around more people, but that’s difficult to accomplish when one lives in abandoned buildings and changes towns like socks: every two weeks or so.

Unless, of course, he  happens upon a comfy spot, like this one here. No one visits his new fort, not even rowdy teenagers looking to drink and to spray-paint incomprehensible messages on the walls. It’s rather remote, farther out from the center of the city, but still not in the middle of the suburbs. Suburbs are tricky. All those people who never really venture outside of their homes, but always know if a strange, scruffy-looking man is wandering around the neighborhood—which, actually, isn’t a bad thing, in general, but it certainly doesn’t make Gwaine’s life any easier. At least in cities no one really looks twice at someone so unkempt as Gwaine. In fact, they _avoid_ looking at him. And they don’t seem to throw that much of a hissy fit if they catch him stealing. He thinks they’re just more used to it than suburb folk.  

Not that anyone ever really catches him. He’s much too good at it, now. It’s probably his best skill, besides fighting brutes and beating tipsy pub patrons in drinking matches (and then collecting the betting money in both cases).

Speaking of which.

Gwaine gathers all of his things together, meager though they are, and stores them in the largest, most secure cabinet. The metal is pretty thick, and he’s decently assured that any rats who do manage to sneak in won’t have enough time to also chew their way into the cabinet.

Items secured, he then turns his attention to the exit. Well, _his_ exit. He long ago blockaded the door to the basement against snoopy humans (who haven’t shown up _yet_ ), rats, and any other curious wild creatures. In case anyone or anything did happen to visit, he could at least have a head-start.

The crates creak beneath his weight, as he hoists himself up towards the window. Grunting softly—his shoulder is still sore from last night’s fight—Gwaine grips the concrete sill and pulls himself up. The window is rectangular, longer in length than width. It’s a bit narrow, but after years of this lifestyle he navigates himself through it with little to no effort. His belly scrapes against the outside cement as he swiftly wriggles out of the window, which he shuts behind him with a firm tug.

Standing, Gwaine takes a quick inventory of himself. He straightens his clothes, swiping the dirt off his front and back as best he can. He scrubs a hand through his beard (or scruff, because even though the stuff on the top of his head grows like a weed, his beard somehow manages to stay on just this side of attractively gruff), checking for lingering bits of apple or dried blood. His hair, which is greasy and limp from a lack of decent washing in ages, he ties back into a small ponytail with an elastic band. If he participates in the fights tonight with the rest of the bums, he’ll have to take it out again; it’s too easy to grab a hold of. But for now, he’s not headed to the ring. Best to appear acceptable if he’s going to charm someone into buying him a drink. He sprays a liberal amount of body spray from a tiny, portable bottle (one of those travel ones he swiped from a drug store) to cover up the stink. His stink.

Satisfied, Gwaine starts forward in the direction of the nearest, preferably shadiest pub he can find.

* * *

Gwaine is homeless. He has been for a while now. Years. It’s a long story, one that involves little heroism on his part and a great deal of tragedy.

He doesn’t like to talk about it.

What’s done is done and now he lives on the streets, traveling from town to town, city to city. He thinks he’s covered almost the entire island by this point, having collected numerous stories along the way, not all of them flattering. He’ll gladly tell anyone who will listen _those_ tales because, as Gwaine had not realized when he began, there is something terribly lonely about being on the run.

And it was not until later, perhaps a month after, that Gwaine also realized that this night, fateful as he would later call it, was the night he officially stopped running.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heart-eyes and bar fights.
> 
> Note: slight edit--it doesn't really change what has happens in this chapter, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry this took so long to update; I couldn't decide if I wanted to include the fight or not. 
> 
> Also awkward flirting. oh lord.

A dive is a dive is a dive.

Or something.

Gwaine has been in almost every bar from Glasgow to London, from Dublin to... probably Dublin again. He’s made roundtrips before, circling around certain cities like a vulture, and Dublin was a marvelous time. And during those trips, he’s lived it up! Well, as best as one can when one occasionally has to sleep in abandoned subway tunnels. In short: Gwaine has seen a number of pubs, most of them poorly lit, with duck-taped barstool seats and sticky tables, exposed brick and hardwood booths—so the one he swaggers into tonight isn’t really worth much note. There’s a flickering halogen light display in the front window, a woman cleaning glasses behind the bar, an untouched PacMan machine shoved against the far wall, and a pool table at the other end. Some patrons chat amiably (though not particularly lively) over the soft rock playlist pumping through the speakers. Four lugs in leather jackets surround the pool table, hardly playing or speaking: just drinking and waiting to remember who’s up next. A couple bar flies sit slumped on the stools.

Like he said, it’s a dive. A local drinking hole, nothing special.

But even if it was the newest scene or the dirtiest scab on the island, he doubts it would matter much to him. There’s always something to be said of atmosphere, and if there’s one thing he likes, it’s the mood of a bar. It’s timelessness, anonymity, without expectation. And for Gwaine, at least, it’s hard to be lonely in a pub. He can always find someone to talk to in a place like this. Sometimes, he gets lucky and they’re willing to buy him not only a drink, but a plate of wings too.

Maybe he’ll have a bit of luck tonight.

He walks to the bar, tries to put a little _oomph_ in his step, a little jump to travel up from his feet to his hips, making them sway a little more; and the motion carries, rolling up his spine into his shoulders, so they appear both looser and bigger at the same time. He winks at a group of women, revels in watching them all perk up, smiles at another interested fellow giving him the once-over, and feels... a sense of relief. A small thrill from the attention, yes, but mostly relief because no one suspects who he is or where he lives--or doesn't live.

Confident: that’s what he’s trying to project. With an air of ‘ _I totally have money to pay for my own drink but I’m going to make you work for buying mine anyway_ ,’ with a dash of ‘ _I don’t squat in an abandoned building, why,_ do you _?_ ’ And he feels like he’s pulling it off.

He pulls up a stool (the stool resists slightly, like it’s stuck in gum) and plops down near the corner of the bar. It gives him a pretty good view of the exit but doesn’t restrict him entirely to the shadows—like the guy sitting against the wall, two seats down from Gwaine. Occasionally, the man scans the bar and then his eyes, shadowed beneath a fringe of dark hair, dart to the front window.

_Well, that’s not suspicious._

He watches as the man fiddles with his pint but doesn’t drink, running his fingers up and down the handle, tapping the glass with his nails. _Nice hands_ , Gwaine thinks distantly.

Nice everything, actually. Even in the dim lighting, between stolen glimpses, he can see that this guy is good-looking. Maybe not classically so, but there’s something all together striking about him and yet... approachable? Disarming? It’s hard to put into words. Gwaine finds himself forgetting what he looks like the moment he looks away. The only thing that sticks out is his red scarf, tucked halfway into his dark navy blue jacket.

But just as he is gathering his courage to talk to the man (‘Man,’ why is saying ‘man’? The bloke must be his age, if not younger), the bartender beats him to it.

“Still working on that beer, handsome?” she flirts easily, friendly but not untruthful.

Handsome smiles at her, a bit embarrassed, and says, “Thanks, yeah.”

Nice voice.

"Just holler if you need anythin’.” She winks.

He nods again and takes a sip, as a show of good faith, probably . He’s obviously not here to drink.

The bartender moves on to him. Her friendly manner is still there, though perhaps a bit less forward. “What will it be?” she asks.

Gwaine leans back, grins, and gestures to the guy by the wall. “I’ll have whatever he’s drinking.”

That seems to catch Red Scarf’s attention, however briefly. Gwaine gives him a little wave, which he reciprocates, after a moment. The bartender leaves to fill his order, and Gwaine takes the opportunity to move down a seat. The bloke glances at him, retains a polite composure, and does not fidget in his seat. He’s either really good or completely indifferent.

Gwaine particularly hopes it’s the former.

“Hi,” he says, only berating himself .02 seconds later for such a flat opening. Even a casual “Ev’ning” would have been much smoother than that.

Red regards him not coldly, not warmly, but not neutrally either. Assessing, maybe, but not in any threatening or robot-like way. God, he's rambling.

“Hullo.”

The bartender slides his pint out in front of him, and Gwaine diverts his attention for just one second. But oh, how he hates to. “Would like me to pay for this now or later, luv?” he asks, still projecting an aura of ‘ _I have a sufficient amount of money to buy a drink. Look at me, I'm captain moneybags_.’

The few crumpled bills in his wallet disagree. If worse comes to worst, he can probably afford the one drink, but it’ll mean having nothing for the rest of... well, until he can get a hold of more money. Which could be never, for all he knows. So, yes, it would better if someone else payed off the tab.

The bartender, however, doesn’t seem half as concerned. She waves her washcloth around, the dingiest flag of surrender. “You aren’t going to run out on me, are ya?”

He checks his impulse to gulp. ( _Wouldn’t be the first time_.)

Gwaine smiles, easy as pie, and leans forward on his crossed forearms. “’Course not.” He winks, because it doesn’t hurt to turn up the charm. “I’m a man of my word.”

“How noble,” pipes up the voice to his right. It’s Red, now staring directly at Gwaine, like he could look through his very bones if he tried hard enough.

Gwaine feels rather than hears his throat clicking.

Thankfully, the bartender intervenes, bless her soul. “Aye,” she says, “it'd be noble indeed if I ever got a man to pay off their tab at the end of the night.” Her gaze slides to the men at the pool table, looking like she just tasted something foul, before moving on to the other end of the bar.

He feels for her, he does; too often has Gwaine experienced the cold, greedy hands of refusal to shell out what was due to him. Especially after taking a dive and getting his ass handed to him by a bloodied bum.

But that wasn’t what tonight was for.

Tonight was for companionship. Comradery. Free booze.

“Gwaine,” he says, thrusting out his hand.

“Um?”

“Name’s Gwaine.”

“Oh.” Something clicks in Red's eyes and he reaches out with his own hand. They shake. “Right.”

A good deal of tension leaves his back and shoulders, previously hunched over the counter. Gwaine watches his expression soften and warm, much more friendly than before.

“It’s just—I thought you might have been—I mean, nevermind—”

Gwaine raises his eyebrows, amused. “Sorry, were you expecting someone?” He looks around the room, knowing that whoever he’s waiting on hasn’t showed yet.

He scoffs, and not unkindly. “I guess not.”

Oh.

Shit.

He shifts in his seat, guilt welling up in his gut. It’s been years, but Gwaine remembers being stood up: it sucks. There's nothing quite like being told you're not good enough without being told.

Heeeee probably shouldn’t take advantage of that. Technically, he could; it’s not like he doesn’t have cause to do so. On the cosmic scale of things, living on the streets is probably worse than having your date skip out on you—that’s probably worth at least one drink.

He should almost definitely not take advantage.

 _Shit_.

Guess he’s paying tonight.

“Sorry, mate,” he says. He reaches out and taps his glass to Red’s own. The _clink_ of solidarity brings a smile to both of their faces. “To drinking alone.”

They both take a drink.

Red Scarf _clinks_ their glasses again: “To new friends.”

His eyes watch Gwaine over the rim of his mug, and while Red isn’t throwing any _bedroom eyes_ his way—no, nothing so explicit—he can’t help but feel a thrill up his spine, a warming in his chest, and something making his neck itchy. It’s difficult to swallow the next sip, but Gwaine manages.

Mostly. He coughs a little—very suave.

“Don’t friends usually know each other’s names, first?” he asks, setting his pint down. A place like this does without coasters, though he thinks the bartender would probably prefer it, given the way she keeps wiping down the surface.

Red makes a face, amused. “I know yours, already. It’s… Gawain?”

“Gwaine.”

“Gwaine.” He squints when he smiles. “Sorry.”

“You should be—you haven’t told me yours yet.”

Red pouts slightly, his brows drawn together in momentary confusion, and then once that clears, he sticks out his hand. “Where we left off.”

"Gwaine," he says.

"Merlin."

Gwaine is just about to close their second handshake when the pub door practically slams open, catching the attention of all patrons who can hold their head up without assistance. A man—one _ugly_ fucker—walks through the door like he’s king ogre. Another guy, shorter, slightly stupider-looking though nevertheless just as intimidating, trails behind him. The men at the pool table greet the ugly fucker with smirks and carousing and smug, sly looks tossed around the bar. Amateurs and sycophants, the lot of them.

“Evening, Mary!” the ugly fucker calls out.

The bartender, whom he can only assume is Mary, grips the edge of the bar. That sour look she wore before is back, with a tinge of nausea thrown in.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gwaine can see Merlin retracting his arm. Unlike Gwaine, whose nerves are now singing with tension, on high alert for any hint of a fight, Merlin remains relatively relaxed in his barstool. Only his eyes have sharpened, focused with an all-together different kind of stare than the one he gave Gwaine only moments before.

The ugly fucker ambles his way up to the bar, thankfully at the other end of where Gwaine and Merlin are seated. He leers at Mary, grinning with yellow-stained teeth. Strong woman as she is, Mary doesn’t back down; though Gwaine can’t deny the discomfort radiating from her form.

“I’m here fer my share, luv,” the mean bastard announces. His stubby fingers drum along the bar, and his eagerness (as well as his self-satisfied air) makes Gwaine’s face twist in disgust.

“I gave you your _share_ when you came to collect last week,” Mary replies. Her voice has lost some of its spark.

“Aye,” he says, swiping a beer from behind the counter, “and I’m back fer this week.”

He whips out a Swiss army knife and pops the beer bottle cap in one motion, and then swiftly replaces it in his pocket. Gwaine can’t really picture him uncorking a bottle of rosé wine in his study, so he can only guess what other uses ugly fucker has for the trinket.

It's not the most subtle of intimidation tactics, but it does the job. 

Gwaine has seen this before: local gangs like to shake down businesses and demand payment to guarantee their “protection,” often from their own people. They like to think they own the neighborhood and are therefore entitled to suck every drop of potential profit dry. And in a weird way, Gwaine supposes he understands how people come to that—when they have no other options. Lord knows Gwaine’s moral record isn’t clean; he’s done plenty that he regrets. But he takes pride in knowing that he has never robbed from those who couldn’t afford it, hasn’t hurt those who weren’t asking for it or deserving a fight. He’s never sunk so low at this ugly fucker.

Someone should punch him, Gwaine decides. See if he turns out prettier.

Merlin places his hand on Gwaine’s knee. “Wait,” he mouths.

They don’t have to wait long. Before he knows it, ugly fucker—whom Mary calls “Dagger” but his knuckles read “Dagr,” fuckin hell—is demanding whatever she’s got in the register and when she refuses, he grabs her by the front of her shirt. That has Merlin and him jumping up from their seats faster than twin rockets.

Catching the attention of not only Dagr and Mary, but Dagr’s sidekick and the four leather-bound thugs at the pool table.

 _Shite_.

“Let go of her,” Gwaine says first, though only because he suspects he beat Merlin to the punch.

“Oh, yeah?” Dagr, dumb brute that he is, releases Mary anyway and turns all of his malice on him. “Wha’ are you goin’ to do about’it?”

“We aren’t looking for trouble,” Merlin says, although Gwaine would be the first to call bullshit on himself. He’s always looking for trouble. “Let’s talk this over, eh?”

Dagr stills, staring at them. “All right.” He whistles and starts to stalk over to their side of the bar, his followers looming behind him. “We’ll _talk_.”

His dogs snicker, and Gwaine feels his face twitch.

“Didn’t mommy ever tell you to use your words?” he asks cooly.

It’s certainly not the right thing to say—if Dagr cracking his knuckles with a grimace that could kill small animals is any indication. First rule of participating in a bar brawl: never mention a man’s mother.

“You think I can’t take you, lady hair?” Dagr sneers. It is, by far, not the worst thing he’s ever been called. “You and that skinny bastard?”

Merlin scoffs, a scathing sound—something clearly touched a nerve with him, too—and reaches for his mug. “I’d like to see you try,” he mutters. And takes a drink.

Well color Gwaine impressed and a little bit turned on. 

Dagr rises to the challenge. Suddenly, his hand surges out and smashes against the bar, cracking his still mostly full bottle in what is no way a clean break. Beer and shards of glass erupt over the bar and floor. Mary yelps, along with a few other bar patrons, and shields herself from the mess and glass. Some of the beer stains her shirt, but what really gets Gwaine’s blood going is the sight of hers, welling up and dripping down her forearm in a thin jagged line. _That son of a bitch_.

Grinning just about makes Dagr’s face uglier, if that is even possible. He grips the jagged nose of the bottle, far too smug with himself.

“Outside,” Merlin demands, stronger than Gwaine expected.

They make it outside.

You know… eventually.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we have a kerfuffle of a scuffle. Or at least, a partial kerfuffle of a scuffle, as I shuffle to finish this ruffle in chapter 4.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am inexperienced when it comes to writing fight scenes, so this was challenging. It's not finished, this scene, but I wanted to post something soon. I hope you enjoy.

Gwaine and Merlin watch as Dagr and his gang begin to slowly edge toward them, giving Gwaine time to strategize. It’s all quite dramatic. He’s reminded of _West Side Story_ , except there are no musical numbers in store tonight.

Gwaine doesn’t doubt that the rest of them have knives and other sharp things hidden on them, but at the moment his number one target is Dagr. With a still-sudsy bottle neck of jagged glass in his hand and a Swiss Army knife stuffed in the pocket of his unwashed jeans, Dagr is the most potentially dangerous out of all of them. For now. He and his weapons of choice need to be neutralized _first_.

As someone more accustomed to fighting with his fists (or nearby blunt objects in times of need), Gwaine can admit that he doesn’t know too much about how to rid Dagr of his pointy toys _safely_.

He’s got some other ideas, though.

At last, Dagr stands just in front of him, Merlin off to his right a little. ( _Good,_ he thinks.) The air in the bar is heavy with something other than smoke and the stink of alcohol, the tension pulled taughter than a guitar string on the point of snapping. The ugly fucker practically seeps self-satisfaction. He thinks his intimidation tactic is working, but even in the thickest of scraps, Gwaine feels his body finally unwind. It locked up on him before, when there was only the threat of violence. But now that there is clearly more than a threat, it’s almost as if he’s become resigned to the fight. Conditioning, maybe.

For all of Dagr’s looming and threats, the ball is in Gwaine’s court. He can see it, he can _see_ Dagr waiting for him to make his move—probably so he can claim that Gwaine instigated the fight, as if he would be stupid enough to call the police or anyone else. No, Gwaine has other ideas.

He grins at Dagr.

And then head-butts him in the nose as hard as he can.

It hurts, it always fucking hurts, but Gwaine recovers quickly enough. It’s much worse to be on the receiving end. In his pained daze, Dagr loosens his grip on the beer bottle, which Gwaine swipes out of his hand. He means to toss it over the bar, but he underestimates the velocity of his throw and it smashes against the wall, bursting like a star.

It’s like a switch is flipped. The once sleepy pub erupts into a clamor of patrons fighting gang members, tables overturning, chairs scraping back and falling over, glass smashing, people grunting, shrieking, and so on.

 _Damn,_ he thinks, already ducking a swing from staggering Dagr. It’s good to be home.

Amidst his ducking and weaving, he doesn’t miss Merlin vaulting over the side of the bar, the sound of glass popping under his shoes. He sees Mary, having already wrapped her arm with a cloth napkin or handkerchief of some kind, breaking a plate over the head of a leather-clad henchman. The guy drops against the bar and then slumps to the ground beneath it.

Another couple of plates go flying out, thrown by Merlin this time, Gwaine wagers, glancing at that bright spot of red in the corner of his eye. One dish lands between the shoulder blades of someone menacing a small man in his sixties with a pool stick. The plate breaks on impact. Another strikes the back of Pool Stick’s head, stunning him. The old man scuttles around the table, grabs his own pool stick, and begins whapping the living crap out of the guy until he’s curled up on the floor.

Gwaine feels a punch glance off his shoulder, the bad one. He winces, slows a little, tries not to let it show. But the way Dagr sneers at him, he thinks the message still got through.

Crap. He has to keep his concentration on Dagr; it’s been a while since he’s been in a melee like this.

Dagr charges, swinging more right hooks than not, trying to catch Gwaine’s weaker side. He ignores the ache in his shoulder, now spreading down his arm and side with every movement and occasionally landed punch. But he keeps his defenses up and gives as equally as he can take—or better yet, what he can avoid. A few of his own jabs make their mark, but Dagr doesn’t seem fazed, having already recovered from a nasty head butt.

It’s going pretty well—in the sense that he isn’t beaten to a pulp or dead yet—but that’s right about the moment that Gwaine realizes what Dagr is doing: advancing. With each punch and lunge, he moves closer and closer into Gwaine’s space, one step at a time, forcing Gwaine backwards. The revelation hits him when he hears rather than feels the crackle of glass under his feet. It scares him, takes him out of the fight for a second, which allows Dagr’s fist to pay a particularly painful visit upon Gwaine’s cheek. He stumbles, his back briefly making contact with the wall. He pushes off it before allowing himself to be boxed in. His hands come away sticky—from the bottle he smashed against the wall; thank god it’s not urine— and the glass cracks again under his scrambling sneakers.

But despite his efforts, he’s still dangerously close to being cornered. Gwaine already learned the hard way in the ring that _that_ is the last place anyone wants to be—trapped like a rat. _Especially_ , Gwaine thinks, glancing over Dagr’s shoulder, _when your opponent has a buddy waiting in the wings._

He can feel his pulse starting to quicken, his haunches rising again. Things get blurry and sharp in weird places. Strangely enough, his eyes zero in on a patch on sidekick’s jacket, something he didn’t notice before. “Ebor” the worn gray-and-red patch reads.

The fuck is with these guys and their names.

Distraction, _distraction,_ he needs a distraction.

“Fellas, fellas, fellas,” he says. Gwaine puts up his hands and lets his mouth run, like a leaky faucet. He’s still smiling though, as long as he can. “ _Fellas_.”

“Shuddup, _bitch_ ,” Dagr growls. Rude.

Ebor laughs then spits on the ground, as if in agreement. Ew.

Any attempts at civility are clearly lost on these two, even as a means of distraction.

Right, so there’s only one course of action left.

Gwaine feints to his left, where there’s a wider channel of empty space and clearly a better chance of escape, but only Tweedle-dum moves to try and block him off. He misjudged them; Dagr may be the natural leader, but they move like partners. If they trusted each other less, they would have moved in tandem.

 _Shit!_ Gwaine goes for it anyway; he scrambles towards the right. Dagr, tensed like a snake, strikes after him the second he changes direction. It’s close—he just manages to dodge a swipe from one of Dagr’s meaty claws. He heaves himself up on a low barstool rung and moves to swing over the bar, but in his haste he propped himself up with his left arm. His shoulder gives and he loses the momentum of the jump, practically belly-flopping on the wooden surface. By now he’s caught Mary’s attention, after she and the patrons have seemingly taken down most of the leather brutes. She grabs his forearm to help slide him behind the bar faster.

And it would have worked without a hitch, maybe, if it weren’t for Tweedle-dee. Because Dagr didn’t go for the feint, he closes in on Gwaine quicker, grasping his pant leg. Instinctually, Gwaine starts kicking like a madman. He has to turn on his side a bit for better range of motion, but he can thank his lovely late mother for those dance and gymnastic classes she forced him to take with his sister for that. Yet, even with his impressive high kicks, he thinks he must look at least ten times sillier than he feels.

Despite any and all silliness, the kicking helps. A burst of sick satisfaction, tasting like a particularly sour-sweet lemon candy, spreads through the pleasure centers of Gwaine’s brain when he feels his heel connect with Dagr’s nose. The man falls back and Mary wastes no time hoisting Gwaine over to the other side. He lands on his ass, which is just firm and perfect enough to protect his tailbone from a bad bruising.

He looks up at Mary. “Thanks.”

She extends her hand. “Thank _you_ ,” she says. “Consider it a free drink.” And then pulls him to his feet. She winks after the offer, which embarrasses him more than a leer ever could. He had hoped he hid his... living situation well, but apparently not well enough.

He averts her eyes under the pretext of scanning the pub. He watches, impressed, Merlin smash an old clay jug over Ebor’s head. Old Man Pool Stick seems to  still be dishing out a good couple of smacks here and there. A group of women, who had previously been crowded around the small round table and eyed him up like a delicious steak, takes turns hitting their surrounded victim with their purses, a ring of accessory-based vigilantism. There’s still some struggling going on all over the pub, though most of the leather jerks are being subdued.

“Even with all this damage?” he asks, like an ass.

“It may not be practical,” she says, ducking a flying bowl of mixed nuts and getting some shells in her hair, “but it’s worth it to see someone fight those bastards.”

“Happy to oblige,” says Merlin, joining them. He doesn’t actually sound too happy, too irritable and out of breath, but the fresh flush of pink in his face says otherwise. There’s something twisted in Gwaine that thinks it’s a good look on him.

When this is all over, Gwaine thinks… But his thoughts trail off at the sight of the two thugs over Merlin’s shoulder. They’re lumbering to their feet yet again, Ebor wet from whatever was in that jug and Dagr dripping blood from his broken nose.

But that’s not so much what catches his attention as what comes next.

Dagr swipes at the blood, smearing it along his upper lip and jaw, and the motion knocks something into the open—something slips out of the collar of Dagr’s shirt. It’s a chain, with a clear crystal dangling from the end of it. It doesn’t really suit him, isn’t really cohesive with his leather-clad-smelly-deadbeat style. His sidekick staggers behind him—a similar chain and crystal handing from his neck. So either they’re wearing the gaudiest BFF necklaces Gwaine has ever seen (at least on a pair of gang members) or these bastards are magic-users.

 _Shit_. Shit shit shit.

He needs to—to—knock them out, or better yet, move them outside. Get them out of the enclosed area. They haven’t opened fire yet, so it’s possible that they don’t have magic themselves, only magical objects, but who knows what the hell those crystals do. With enough stored energy, even a healing crystal can cause damage.

It’s also entirely possible that they _do_ have magic, however weak or strong, but are holding off on it until they absolutely have to. Even bullies fear being reported for magic use, and the punishment that follows. But Gwaine isn’t taking the chance.

Curious, Merlin follows Gwaine’s line of sight and his back tenses. He must have spotted the magicked jewelry as well. “You need to leave,” he says, immediately after turning back around.

Screw that, Gwaine thinks.

And he says so. “I’ll lure them out,” he insists. Merlin stares at him, hard, for a strained few seconds before Gwaine gives in. “Fine. _We’ll_ lure them outside.”

That seems to mollify Merlin. “Any other exits?” he asks Mary, who, at some point when they weren't looking, managed to wrap a dishrag around one of the jerks’ necks, restraining him from across the bar.

She tosses her head to the right, indicating the doors to the kitchen. “Leads out the back,” she says, relatively calm through all of the strangling.

They both bob their heads in gratitude and breeze past her towards the other end of the bar. Gwaine ends up vaulting it, while Merlin sensibly cuts through the swinging partition. At the very least, the move earns him a small smile from Merlin. They dash towards the door together, only looking back once to check on the Dagr and Ebor, following but thankfully not too close behind.

“Good luck!” Mary calls, the same moment she releases her newly unconscious victim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to apologize for the delayed update. There were a number of complications. I just finished the loooong process of moving (with my parents) to a new state, my dog of 15 years had just recently been put down, I'm working full-time as an intern (graduated in May), and I'm still looking for a full-time permanent position. So, it's been hectic.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part two of the scuffle
> 
> warnings in the end notes

They run. There’s no one in here, not this time of night, so they make it through without any complaints from employees. It’s a small space, narrow but surprising long, just enough for the size of the establishment. The exit isn’t hard to miss. The sign, casting a red glow over the stainless steel and questionably clean linoleum, shines like a beacon in the darkened kitchen. The loud bang of a door being slammed open catches Merlin’s attention, but Gwaine doesn’t need to look back to know who’s following them. He grabs the front of Merlin’s jacket and pulls him in front, prodding him along. Without thinking, Gwaine pushes over a metal rack of pots and pans and god knows what else, the noise unbelievable loud, metal crashing into metal, trying to block or slow down their pursuers.

Merlin gets to the door first and—it’s _jammed_. He presses his shoulder against the stuck wood, swollen and warped by the rains, and manages to pry it open. The gap is wide enough for them to squeeze through, Merlin more easily than Gwaine, but they both get there, pushing past the door and stepping out into the chilled, damp autumn night.

He almost trips backwards into Merlin at the sound of sirens. They’re close. He must have missed them in the pub, amidst the cacophony of soft rock and brawling. Lights, red and blue, forming a dizzying, almost hypnotic purple, bounce off the buildings across from the bar front, seen through the alley opening.

Another crash, a handful of grunts, and malicious curses sound off behind them. Merlin catches ahold of his hand and pulls. “This way!” he says, leading them further into the labyrinth of backstreets.

They run, deeper and deeper into the dark, splashing through day-old puddles and litter—farther from what would certainly be their doom if Dagr and Ebor caught them in an open street. The confidence of Merlin’s stride is convincing, enough to believe that maybe he knows where he’s going, but Gwaine can’t make heads or tails of the dizzying left and right turns he takes, seemingly at random. If this wasn’t a new town for him, Gwaine might have taken the lead. But as it is, he can’t tell the streets—enshrined in deceivingly safe light at the ends of each alley they pass—from his own ass ‘n elbow.

But the darkness isn’t enough to protect them.

“Get back here, you fuckers!”

There’s a growing stitch in his side and he’s covered in a fine sheet of sweat underneath his layers; he’s weak with hunger and malnutrition and sore from getting punched for a living, if you can even call it that; he lives in a rodent-infested basement and can’t remember the last time he stopped running—but like hell he’s going to slow down. Not even the rain, dripping sparsely from the sky like spare change slipping out from a pocket hole, can stop him.

He ends up doing it anyway.

Here’s what happens, and it happens quickly: Gwaine catches the tail-end of some rustling, like a rodent digging in the trash, before he sees Merlin propelled forward, something metal clipping and bouncing off his skull into the dark of the night. Had these two events not happened consecutively, he probably wouldn’t have connected them. Merlin falters, thankfully breaking his own fall before cupping the back of his head. He winces and sucks in a breath through his clenched teeth. The alley is barely lit, but Gwaine can see clearly enough when he pulls his hand back and inspects it.

He freezes at the sight, a swarm of heat rushing through him, just as red as the blood staining Merlin’s fingertips. He looks back, and sees that both goons have stopped, a good twenty feet back, stock still. It raises the hairs on the back of his neck. Why not press when they have the advantage?

He watches Dagr grin savagely, head tilted down, the ends of his smile splitting across his face, and Gwaine realizes:

They’re not brutes; they’re _predators._

And predators charge.

Or at least the really mean, boorish ones do.

It’s such a drastic change from the tensed stillness only moments before that Gwaine barely has enough time to piss his pants, let alone defend himself _and_ Merlin. He seizes a nearby trash lid, black and plastic: good enough for defense but not offense.

Lid in hand, he dashes forward and plays about ten seconds of chicken before Dagr barrels into him. It nearly takes the wind out of his sails but he stays on his feet. Gwaine pushes back, using the lid, which is far more difficult than it looks. For one thing, it’s a bulky, flexible plastic. For another, he’s gripping the handle on top, meaning that this shield is concave towards him instead of convex, so all force placed on his opponent comes from the outer lip of the lid and barely any from the center. Thirdly, it’s not as if the lid is strapped to his forearm, secure and effective, but it’s being supported, awkwardly, by his three fingers and wrist. His attacks are more pushing than punching, and far less graceful.

By chance, he manages to block a well-aimed punch from Dagr, and he uses the momentary victory to thrust forward, knocking him onto his ass. It’s almost like the ugly bastard slips. He hears Merlin whoop, briefly.

“Gwaine!—”

Ebor jumps him, wrapping his arm around Gwaine’s neck in a poorly formed chokehold. Gwaine drops the lid and swears; it’s useless to him now. He digs his fingernails into Ebor’s arm, but the leather jacket protects his skin well. It’s not enough to kill him, just to hold him, for Dagr maybe.

Ebor’s grip tightens. Nope—no, now _that’s_ enough to kill him.

Gwaine struggles to breathe. His thoughts almost immediately slow from the lack of oxygen, but he’s been in this position a few times before. The key is to fight the body’s instinct to panic, to resist it long enough center his balance. Ebor is only slightly taller than Gwaine, but that’s all the difference he needs to use Ebor’s leverage against him, bending at the waist and flipping him over onto his back. Ebor hits the ground with a _thud_ and a loud exhale.

Gwaine stays bent over while catching his breath, bracing his arms again his knees. It’s not pretty; he hacks and coughs and spits a little, wheezing the entire time. When he finally straightens his back, he sees Ebor still lying on the ground, splayed out on his back. He groans, not looking too lively any time soon. Either he has lumbar problems or landed on something nasty.

One down.

A flash of silver in the shadows catches his eye. His heart, already pounding, leaps into his throat. He sees Dagr, advancing on Merlin, who is backing up slowly into a wall he must not know is there. His hands are outstretched. He’s talking, maybe, but all Gwaine can hear is the dull rush of blood in his ears. Dagr’s fingers play across the knife edge.

He doesn’t have time to think; he charges forward.

“Gwaine, no!”

Dagr turns around at the last possible second, more irritated than surprised, and Gwaine throws everything into tackling him, pressing his elbow and bad shoulder into Dagr’s abdomen. He goes down like a redwood tree. He hears the _twack-CRACK_ of Dagr’s skull hitting the pavement, watching his head ricochet off the ground as if in slow-motion. And then it’s over. No tumbling or wrestling, _barely_ any hair-pulling. Just the force of gravity at its best.

Then comes the fiery flash of pain.

He hears Merlin calling his name. It feels like he’s hearing and seeing Merlin through a fish tank, murky as all hell. He rolls off of Dagr—ew—and lands in a puddle.

 _Great_. As if being stabbed in the leg weren’t already a pain in the ass, now it’s gotta be a wet one too.

Like an ass, he touches the knife. It’s imbedded pretty deep in the meat of his thigh, the handle almost kissing his skin. A deep throb of pain shoots up and down his entire body; the blade must have hit a nerve, or several. Blood gushes out of the wound after each aching pulse, warm and spreading across his leg, cooling at the edges of his soaked jeans seconds later. It’s surreal.

“Don’t! Don’t touch that!” Merlin—oh, when did Merlin get here?—is crouched down next to him, supporting his neck and trying to get him to lie down fully.

“Have to… get it out.”

“Leave it. It’s the only thing stemming blood loss right now.”

“Whaddyou?” Gwaine says, feeling rather than hearing his speech beginning to slur. “Some sort of doctor?”

“Some sort.”

“A nurse?” he leers. Or tries to, but Merlin brushes it off with a simple eye roll.

“We need to get you to a hospital.” He takes out his phone and unlocks it.

He paws clumsily at Merlin’s phone, smearing a bit of blood on the screen. “No!”

Merlin looks down at him, distraught, as if he can guess why Gwaine’s breath has grown shorter with panic.

“No.” Gwaine shakes his head. “No hospitals.”

“You _need_ —”

Gwaine grips his forearm as hard as he can, which in his current state isn’t very hard at all.

“ _No_ hospital, _no_ police.”

The moment of silence that follows isn’t all that silent. For one, Gwaine can hear himself arguing in his own head, a warring battle of ‘ _go to the hospital, get caught_ ’ and ‘ _stay in the alley, bleed out and die_.’ He doesn’t care for either option, to be perfectly honest. For another, there’s nothing about Merlin’s expression that doesn’t scream desperation, frustration, and fear. Kneeling in the street, hair wet with the drizzling rain, fingers wet with blood, he looks as lost as Gwaine nearly always feels.

Four heartbeats pass. Gwaine continues to bleed, like most days, and for once he’s with someone who wants it to stop.

 _If this is it_ , he thinks (and he really hopes it isn’t), _then at least I’m not alone._

Then, something incredible happens:

Merlin takes his hand, squeezes hard, and doesn’t ask questions.

He needs to _marry_ this man.

Resolve steels over Merlin’s features, hardening his eyes. He mutters to himself a little, head turned away—it sounds like swearing but it is just indistinct enough for Gwaine to miss. And for the first time that night, weighed down with relief and lifted up with a distinct lightheadedness he only ever gets from tequila, he doesn’t care what Merlin does.

He strips off his jacket and folds it underneath Gwaine’s head, pushing damp strands of hair out of Gwaine’s face. It’s comfy; his muscles soften, like a caramel candy hidden under the tongue.

“—oi!”

Fingers snapping in his face. He scrunches his nose in response.  

“Gwaine! Come on, I need you to stay awake.”

“I’m jus’… resting my eyes.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to rest when you don’t have a knife in your thigh,” Merlin says flippantly. If he _is_ a nurse, the first thing he should probably work on his bedside manner. Gwaine says so, eyes still shut, but Merlin, as far as he can hear, ignores him. “Open ‘em,” he demands.

He does, albeit reluctantly. The rain is falling harder now; a few drops cling to his eyelashes. When he blinks away the water, some of it sliding into his eyes, he looks for Merlin, who has moved since he first closed his eyes two seconds ago.

His vision is hazy, as if he were swimming in the ocean at night. He did that once, to his mother’s chagrin and severe scolding. They were on holiday in the south, staying in a small beach town, the kind that’s more affordable than quaint. His father dared him to do it and laughed when he took up the challenge. His father made sure he was never afraid.

Was it two seconds?

Probably not. When he was thirteen he had his wisdom teeth removed; they put him under for three hours, but it might have just as well as been three seconds. This was a lot like that, but with more consciousness and blood and also his last doctor was a middle-aged woman, not some guy he met in a dive thirty-odd minutes before. Now that would be one hell of a dental surgery.

He has pry open his eyes again. When did he blink?

He sees hands, fingers, at his thigh, knotting something. It takes him a few seconds but he recognizes the fabric, now a makeshift tourniquet. It’s Merlin’s scarf, already stained with his blood.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Gwaine mutters, a lie he intends to make good on.

Merlin scoffs, almost fondly, if anyone has ever been fond of Gwaine. “Red goes with red.”

His little sister’s first Christmas: they all wore matching sweaters. Gwaine tied the tree skirt around his shoulders like a cape because it was the same shade of red. He knocked over all of the presents and broke an ornament, but they took the picture anyway.

His mother’s lipstick.

His father’s medals.

He follows the sound of his voice and finds Merlin’s face in the darkness.

He can’t say how it is different, but it is. It’s like hearing music through the walls of building, knowing the melody but failing to recognize it—until hearing it the next day, clear as crystal, from a passing radio, the car rolling in and out of your life faster than it would take to hit you. It’s the smudge of shadow under his cheekbone, the curve of his ears (large but cute), the mulish-looking chin set at the end of jaw that could cut glass, the bump in his nose, the narrow length of his face matching the narrow length of his body almost perfectly. Merlin smiles down at him, tightly, hardly reassuring. His lips forming words he can’t hear over the buzzing. Words like “have to move”—or maybe “have to remove”—“got to prove”—“I’ve got you”—any way, he likes the way his mouth hold and mold the sounds.

He is the last thing Gwaine sees before sinking.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: fighting, stabbing, blood, loss of consciousness


	5. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little glimpse into gwaine's past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, guys! a shorter chapter this time. a little bit of background and worldbuilding--a memory recalled just moments before he passed out in the previous chapter--plus it will hopefully pace out the storyline. i hope you enjoy!

When Gwaine was eleven—just shy of puberty, riddled with awkwardness, and in the beginning stages of transforming into a beautiful butterfly—his father’s patrol car was punctured with a couple magazine rounds of bullets. Consequently, so was his dad.

He was shot down by anti-magic fanatics—the ones who were supposedly _advocating_ for a safer world—just after the leak of confidential files on former federal workers: those whose magical identities had been kept secret following the Purge of the late eighties. The group called themselves the Witch Hunters; they either faded out or transformed into something more malignant, Gwaine couldn’t be too sure, but in those days, just around the decade anniversary, anti-magic sentiment and gang vigilantism was high. Those so-called “hunters” were outraged that magic users had been protected by their former agencies, probably having been relocated and unpunished.

The city didn’t go mad, but it got close. Gwaine never saw much of it; they lived just outside of Caerleon and his parents didn’t let him out of their sight. Especially after they caught him sneaking into the city with some friends, trying to catch a film. It was innocent enough, and no kid ever thinks anything is going to happen to them at a place so mundane. But his parents had been upset when they found him sneaking out of a disaster movie in what was, essentially, the middle of a disaster area.

It had been a routine beat for his father, but an irregular vehicle. It was the car—Gwaine could remember the captain explaining this to his trembling mother, you see, it was the car that was the trouble.

It wasn’t his usual, though remarkably similar. Same make, model, color, and design, with the key addition of the Magical Enforcement Unit logo. Three letters, MEU, stamped on both sides of the car—that’s all the difference it took.

His father hadn’t even been _involved_ in that unit. Though every officer was required to intervene should they discover an active magic user, there was a special task force in place to handle a direct call about magic usage. (The MEU being different, of course, from the MOCU (Magical Objects Containment Unit), the larger federal MEA (Magical Enforcement Administration), or even the SMCAT team (Special Magic Control and Tactics).)

But this was all incidental information to the shooters in the opposing car, painted signature red-gold-and-black of the Witch Hunters, who drove past his father’s police car at 1:56pm on a bloody Tuesday of all days and turned the driver’s side door into Swiss cheese. And then drove away.

They were caught, tried, and sentenced, but to eleven-year-old Gwaine anything less than eye-for-an-eye was not justice.

(What happened after, what landed him on the street, that’s a different story. Irrelevant and not what Gwaine was focused on in the cluttered backstreets of whatever city he had stumbled into.)

The police car, when hit, didn’t explode, not like they always did in the movies, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier for Gwaine to watch action movies, even years later. No, his father didn’t go in a burst of smoke and flame. Blood poured from him, like wine from a spilled bottle, pooled around him and out of the car door, into the street.

In the alley, Gwaine finally knew what his father’s last moments felt like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know little to nothing authority groups and regulations, so this is pretty on the fly.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wakey wakey eggs and ugh so much aspirin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, all, it's been a while. forgive me, i have an erratic schedule. this fic is not abandoned, though. 
> 
> this chapter feels a little erratic, so i may come back and fix it. oh the great experiment continues!

Gwaine wakes up in a strange bed. Mostly, what’s strange about it is that _it’s a bed_. You know, one of those things that he doesn’t have. A bed, in someone’s home, which hasn’t happened since he was sixteen and stupid. Or… more stupid. It was usually a girl’s room—mostly because all of the guys who tried to pick him up back then were older and expected certain, uh, services—but this one definitely looks like a guy’s bedroom. If the dirty laundry (boxers included) strewn about the floor and the general male feel—man _vibe_ —to the place is any indication. The bloke must have really been his type.

He yawns and notices the particularly sour flavor of death in his mouth. Over the years, he's adjusted to a fuzzy teeth sort of lifestyle (brushing his teeth once a day with water if he can spare it, some toothpaste if he was lucky at the drugstore); but this taste--along with a sweeping sensation of nausea and a small headache pounding at his temples--tells him booze was involved somehow.

So he could have been drunk, too.

He shifts in the bed, his back stiff—which is not unusual for someone used to sleeping on floors, benches, and shelter cots—and that’s the first time he feels it: the itching. It’s different than anything Gwaine’s felt before, at least in terms of itching; like it’s below the skin, centered in one spot on Gwaine’s leg.

He moves again, trying to dislodge the sensation. A sharp twinge of pain runs up and down his leg, like telegraph coming over the wire, clearing the fog of morning thoughts.  
  
Right.

Gwaine pushes back the covers to inspect the worst of it. Gwaine squeezes his eyes shut, allowing himself one moment of squeamish fear before they snap back open to measure the damage.

As it turns out, it’s not that bad. His leg is stitched up (he can feel it, the thread in his skin) and wrapped in fresh bandages. He can’t recall much about the extent of blood loss, but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of it here. The sheets beneath him aren’t so much bloodsoaked as they are bloodstained; smears of dried blood, the color of brown rust, decorating the light gray. Not much of it seems to have gotten on the blue duvet, which is a good thing, he supposes. At least for the guy who regularly sleeps in it.

And with that thought, Gwaine is already trying to figure out a way how to get out of the bed with an injured leg. He is closest to the left edge of the mattress, which also happens to be his injured side. Somehow, he decides, he'll have to turn his body enough so that his right leg hits the floor first, taking his weight as he stands. No way in hell is he going to be caught by some nut who decided to take him home instead of just leaving him to bleed out in the alley.

Gwaine is clearly a hobo; people don’t just patch up hobos and keep them in their bed.

At least no one Gwaine has ever met.

Of course, he is about one tenth of the way towards standing up, shifting his hips and sore leg as gently as possible in his escape, when the door opens and someone walks in—

Who is actually totally his type, _god_.

Talk about shifting hips.

“You’re awake,” he happily declares.

Nice voice, Gwaine thinks.

But you can't just say things like that to people you barely know and whom, apparently, performed emergency medical surgery on you in their bedroom. So Gwaine just nods and says, "I think so." Like an ass.

"Good." Something pinches in his face; it kind of looks like a smile. "Back in a moment," he says.

When he returns, it's with an aspirin bottle the size of his fist and a large glass of water, which Gwaine hadn't even realized he was dying for until he saw it. He's a tall chap, Gwaine observes--thin but hardly weedy, not if the corded biceps peeking out from beneath his short-sleeve shirt have anything to say about that. Still, he's not the first person Gwaine would assume had been in a bar brawl.

The night at the bar comes rushing back to him--(The bed thing must have thrown him off.)--and one name sticks out in neon letters in the darkness of his brain:

Merlin.

He's a little disappointed that he didn't immediately remember Merlin, but Gwaine is pretty used to waking up in a daze. Likewise, it's not all that surprising that a fog still lingers around his memories of Merlin, even with the bloke standing right in front of him. He remembers how they met, most of their conversation, teaming up against a bunch of bullies, ducking out the back, etc., but it's like someone smudged his face out of Gwaine's memories with one of those crappy pencil rubbers, the ones better suited to carving stone than actual erasing. Weird.

But wow, _his face_. The slated daylight does wonders for him. Prominent cheekbones, round ears, full lips--smiling tentatively at Gwaine--eyes blue and wide and distracting. It’s cute, he’s cute, and everything about him is cute. Even his eyebrows are cute and disarming. Gwaine kind of wishes he was sixteen and stupid again.

Merlin places everything on a table near the window before helping Gwaine into a sitting position. There is no headboard for the bed, a disappointing fact for all of Gwaine’s fantasies, so he settles against a few pillows and the cold wall. Granted, it probably wouldn't be as cold if he was wearing a shirt, something Gwaine takes note of with glee. When Merlin turns around to recover the water and aspirin, Gwaine folds one arm behind his head, pillowing his skull, and lets the blanket fall down across his hips. Just above where the waistband of his briefs would be, were he wearing any.

Merlin marches over with the glass, seemingly unaffected by Gwaine’s charms, and holds it out for him to take. An overwhelming thirst, a different kind of thirst anyway, as well as the taste of dead badger make their presence known. He drops the act, wordlessly accepting the glass while Merlin measures out the pills. He's almost downed the entire thing when Merlin plops three white little tablets in his free hand. He softly aches all over, especially wherever those goons managed to land a few punches, could really use some pharmaceutical help, but Merlin stills his hand before he can knock them back too.

"We should get some food in you first," he says, "otherwise they won't do you much good."

 _That's not the only thing you can put in me_ , Gwaine's brain helpfully supplies.

"How long?" he gasps instead, handing back the now empty glass.

"Maybe 30 minutes? Until the food is settled in your stomach, at least."

"No, I mean... How long was I out?"

"Enough that I should _probably_ be checking your vitals before doing anything else."

Gwaine considers this non-answer, his lower lip jutting up against the other. "Hmm, food first."

Merlin chuckles. "Good choice."

And then he's out the door, taking the glass with him, giving Gwaine the chance to reassess.

He ends up falling asleep instead. He nods off briefly while Merlin's gone. It could be a minute or an hour for all Gwaine currently understands time, but when he returns it's with a tray of food. More water, a cup of steaming tea (milk and sugar to add), a small dish of grapes, a grilled cheese sandwich (god, he hasn’t had that in ages), a bowl of tomato soup, a handful of crackers, and even biscuits.

“My hero,” he says, which makes Merlin laugh.

"I didn't know what you would like. Sorry, I know it's not much," Merlin concedes.

Gwaine has to bite his tongue to stop himself from admitting that this is the best (largest) spread he's seen in a while. "No, thank you."

"Don't eat too fast," he warns. "Start with the soup and pace yourself. Maybe save some stuff for later."

"Later?"

"Or I can make something else for supper. Maybe order out?"

The mention of "later" and "supper" makes Gwaine feel uneasy, and he steadily ignores it in favor of wolfing down the food. “What happened? After I passed out?” he asks between spoonfuls.

While he eats, Merlin gives a relatively short account of the events: once Gwaine stopped responding, Merlin managed to move him, or drag him really, a safe distance from their now-unconscious pursuers and to call on an old friend.

"Do you normally bring strange men to bleed on your friends' doorsteps?" Gwaine interrupts.

"He came to us, actually," Merlin clarifies. "I called him and he drove over. So... you did sort of bleed on his interior."

Gwaine snorts. "Maybe your friend can bill me later."

Merlin leans over and pops a grape in his mouth. "Don't worry about it. Gaius isn't like that."

"Yeah?" Which has Gwaine thinking that maybe Merlin _does_ bring bleeding blokes to this Gaius on a regular basis.

"He put me through school." Merlin shrugs. "Well, federal funding paid for most of it, but he was the one who got me in."

Gwaine isn't one to complain about charity, considering his line of work, and he's happy to learn that Merlin isn't either. If anything, the subject of schooling, university or trade or whatever, makes him uncomfortable, having run away at age 18 and never pursuing anything above general academics.

"What happened next?" he pushes.

"After some, er, strong words from Gaius--" (Merlin winces sort of fondly as he says it) "--we drove here. I drove, anyway, and he worked on your leg in the backseat. He's a retired doctor," Merlin explains. "Or he was, but I think he got bored. He taught for a little while, and now he consults as a private physician."

Gwaine doesn't miss the way Merlin's voice goes a little bit quieter at the end. Must be that doctor-patient confidentiality thing that those hospital shows are always harping on about. Not that he's seen any lately, but sometimes they're playing in the free clinics he goes to after a bad fight.

"Anyway," Merlin continues, barely skipping a beat, "he couldn't do much until we drove here. My building doesn't have a doorman or anything, and luckily it was late enough that no one saw us carrying you inside."

Gwaine can imagine that shitshow if they did.

"From there, it was a lot of routine. Cleaning out the wound, sutures, bandages, you know, boring stuff."

He wonders what Merlin considers exciting.

“You never told me how long I was asleep,” Gwaine points out.

Merlin shrugs. “About a day and a half. It's Sunday, by the way.”

That's... a hell of a long time to be unconscious.

He can't help it: his street instincts kick into hyperdrive and for all Gwaine isn't a materialistic man (even if he likes to play up his vanity), his first worry is for his _stuff_. Hidden in the basement of some crumbling chunk of concrete and steel, his very last and only worldly things.

Those apples are definitely _not_ good by now. At least, like, three of them have gone bad, too mealy to eat. If the rats didn't get to them first.

 _Shite_.

His only comfort is is that he has his most valued stuff with him: his wallet, ID, and his father's necklace. Even the first two he could do without (it's not like he pays bills or gets carded at pubs), but the last, the fine silver chain fitted around his neck, the one he never takes off--that's irreplaceable.

Merlin stands and moves away from the bed, as if he can sense Gwaine's inner freakout. He starts filling Gwaine in on the rest of the story. Gaius' access to various supplies, including painkillers and, uh, blood apparently; "It's for work," Merlin explains, raising more questions about what type of private physician work Gaius does. They gave him a small dose for the pain and a minor transfusion of O type once the wound was patched up. They also attached a saline drip, which Merlin removed some hours ago, _so please, Gwaine, don't pick at the bandages on your arm_.

He's never been taken care of like this before, by a stranger no less. It's surreal.

It helps that Merlin tells him all this while suddenly deciding to pick up his clothes from the floor and toss them in the laundry basket. Gwaine snacks on the biscuits and watches, listens. It's all very domestic. There must something wrong with Gwaine's brain because he finds it somewhat endearing that Merlin hadn't thought to clean up while Gwaine was lying in his bed, recovering from a stab wound. Or maybe he thought it was a moot point, considering Gwaine has been a mainly _unconscious_ house guest.

Feeling somewhat recovered, Gwaine can't help but notice a missing element to Merlin's story.

"So at exactly what point did you take my clothes off?" he asks, in his most innocent voice possible. Which, for Gwaine, sounds like a heretic nun who enjoys adultery as much as gambling, drinking, and other assorted sordidness.

Merlin freezes, surprised, but laughs it off. It's not _exactly_ the reaction he was looking for (adorably flustered being the correct answer) but he can't help but join in a little. It feels like another door opening between them.

"We had to take off your pants to get at the wound," Merlin says, finishing with his impromptu tidying, "and the rest had to go when we were administering the transfusion and the drip. Also, Gaius is pretty by the book; we removed the rest to make sure there weren't any additional injuries." He plays with a piece of clothing in his hands, pausing before continuing. "Plus, you were a little, er, messy, from all of the blood. I cleaned you up a little once you were out of danger."

Gwaine feels that red, warm tingle on his neck again, but more from embarrassment than anything else. He knows the blood probably wasn't the only reason Merlin was willing to clean him up a little. He knows he hasn't bathed properly since his last stint in a shelter: probably three months ago. He usually stays out of them until the winter.

"I can't believe I missed the spongebath!" He stresses the groan for playfulness. "Don't suppose I can get a round two?" he asks, then winks.

Gwaine catches a shirt in the face for his trouble. He snickers through the polyester-cotton blend.

"You might need some help moving to the bathroom, but I think you can manage the shower just fine," Merlin says. Gwaine bunches the shirt in his hand--an action he relizes might be rude only seconds after doing it--and holds it out to Merlin, who shakes his head and pushes it back into Gwaine's lap. "No, hold onto that. I'll lay out the rest of your clothing if you want to get changed now."

Gwaine's mouth does a weird... squiggle thing. "This isn't my shirt," he tells Merlin.

It's really not. His shirt is paper-thin and has matching elbow and armpit holes, a rip in the back of the collar, a distinct muddy-green color that is somehow both faded and caked on, and an equally distinct smell of eggs, booze, and dirt. By all accounts, the shirt in his hands is clean, intact, and _red_. Unless the fight brought on a sudden case of color-blindness, Gwaine is now most definitely holding a different shirt.

(He has other shirts, two to be exact, in his pack, but he doesn't see how Merlin could have tracked down his stash. And anyway, he doesn't own a red shirt.)

"This isn't my shirt," he repeats.

Merlin grimaces. "Sorry, your--when I put your clothes in the wash, they sort of... fell apart."

Great.

"Your jacket survived but barely. It has blood stains too, hard to get out."

Lemon and something, Gwaine thinks. That should do the trick.

"Luckily I've got some spare clothes lying around that should fit," Merlin says happily, gesturing at the shirt, "if you don't mind wearing my t-shirts and sweatpants for the next few days? I don't think you'll fit in my jeans."

Gwaine lets his mouth run while his brain processes this information. "Is that a formal invitation?" He waggles his eyebrows: A for effort.

"You like a challenge?" Merlin counters.

"Always."

Merlin ducks his head and smirks at his hands. "No wonder you fought those guys with me."

He waves that off. "I've had worse."

"I hope not," Merlin says. Sincerely, too, though he clearly takes Gwaine's word for it. "You didn't have to."

"Yeah, well, I can't stand bullies, especially entitled ones," Gwaine says, rubbing his knuckles. He shows a lot of teeth in what is probably a smile but feels a little manic. "And nothing caps off the night like a good brawl."

"I can think of a few better ways to end the night," Merlin replies.

Bafflingly, Gwaine cannot tell whether he is courting Gwaine with innuendo or if he is being genuine. He _sounds_ genuine--like he's envisioning a good game of Scrabble or catching up on his favorite television shows--but there is an element to Merlin's speech and behavior that, Gwaine would come to realize, eludes one absolute meaning or another.

Gwaine clears his throat. "Uh, speaking of which, I... sort of need to use the, er..." He waves his hand vaguely. "The loo."

Merlin stands to attention. "Oh, of course! Right. Let me just help you. Get to the bathroom, I mean! Not the, er, the other thing."

Gwaine chuckles, looping his head and arms through the shirt. He hopes it's long enough to cover his perfect tuckus. And other assorted parts.

"I suppose it would be optimistic to ask if my boxers survived the laundry?" Gwaine asks, draping an arm around Merlin's offered shoulders.

"It certainly would be," Merlin says, eyes straight ahead as he heaves Gwaine up and out of the bed. It's nothing he hasn't already seen, but Gwaine appreciates the courtesy. "I figured I would pick up a pack of new ones, along with some other essentials, once you were awake. Not now, later. Once I can confirm you're well enough to go unmonitored."

It's slow going, walking (or limping, in his case) to the attached bathroom, which Gwaine discovers leads into another room. He's weaker than he realized, and the pain is a different type of pain than what he's ever experienced. He's been cut, sure, deeply even, but never stabbed. It's harder to coordinate, like his leg is both unresponsive and hypersensitive. Gwaine stays silent, grateful for when Merlin shuts the door behind him, leaving Gwaine to pee in peace. Once that's done, he peels off the shirt, suddenly feeling silly he put it on at all, even if just for those few seconds of relative modesty. He fiddles with the shower nobs, touches the towels Merlin left out for him, removes his bandages, checks the water, continues to wait for it to warm up, thinks about the "later" Merlin keeps mentioning. He hasn't stopped thinking about it.

He steps under the stream and _tries_.

("For now," he mumbles under the heavenly spray. "Just for now.")


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> post-shower: begin the freakout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this chapter feels more like an in-between chapter? beyond some character development, i'm not satisfied with how it moves the plot? but! i promise more of that is coming in the next chapter. i'm trying to get this grand experiment back on a schedule.
> 
> anyway, i hope you enjoy.

Gwaine enjoys his shower--a good thirty minutes worth of enjoyment. The hot water stings when it first hits his leg, blood leaking out between the stitches and swirling down the drain, along with the several months' worth of odor and dirt he's accumulated as a homeless man. But the sting quickly fades, just as his muscles uncoil and his joints loosen.

After just standing in the spray for a good five minutes, he explores the contents of the shower: two half-filled bottles of shampoo, a travel size bottle of conditioner (the kind you buy at the airport; never touched), a bar of standard white soap, a gray weird-looking soap, a washcloth halfheartedly dangling over the shower head pipe, and a small graveyard of shampoo and body wash bottles in the far corner. Overall, it's a four star hotel by Gwaine's standards.  
  
He lathers the soap up first, knowing he'll probably need another round. He picks at the grime under his fingernails. He scrubs his soapy hands across his face, through his beard, down his neck--then rinses. And then he attacks his chest and stomach, shoulders and back, what he can reach of his good leg. Merlin said it was okay to get the stitches wet but he didn't say anything about soap, so he avoids a good chunk of his left thigh. (After a second of hesitation, he lathers up his hands and cleans his bits and bobs, too, weirdly paranoid that Merlin was going to find his pubes on the soap.) He contemplates whether he has the balance or strength to get at his feet, but he shies away from the task after almost slipping and cracking his head open. What a shame it would be, to have Merlin stitch him up and he ends up hosting a fatal slapstick routine with the grouted tile in his healer's bathroom.

So he let's the feet go for now, hoping that the rushing water and excess soap does the trick. On a whim, he chooses the nondescript shampoo bottle; it smells faintly of mint. He tries to recall if Merlin smells like mint. After rinsing that out, he uses more conditioner than is probably polite (he has _a lot_ of hair, okay?) but he figures he might as well take what he can get. It's not like he's going to see the inside of this shower again any time soon, once Merlin sends him on his way.

When he grabs the second soap bar for a repeat performance, he's surprised to discover a rock in his palm. He whistles a little. A pumice stone, very posh. He gives it a go, reveling in the layers of grime and old skin he removes with it. His skin tingles a bit afterward; he feels like a squeaky new toy.

He's not, he knows, but it's fun to pretend.

He's a little disappointed he can't keep showering for the rest of his natural life, but fatigue slowly creeps back into his body. It's the deep-bone kind of tired, the kind that pulls you down like the tide. He shuffles under the water, noticeably less warm than when he started, for just a few minutes more before regretfully cutting off the stream and pulling back the curtain.

He passes out in the bed with a towel wrapped carelessly around his lower half and another draped over his hair like the Virgin Mary. Turns out that even with two days of sleeping and a good ol' blood transfusion, he's still weak as shit. He's a bit disgruntled about the whole thing, confronting his limits in an unknown environment. Makes him feel... vulnerable. Before he could (had to) go days without eating, a week if he got enough water and park bench naps in. Now, a light lunch and an afternoon shower has tired him out, as if he were some reality tv housewife.

He makes his displeasure known to the pillow into which his face is smushed before it's lights out.

* * *

He wakes up hours later in a sea of barely concealing sheets and terrycloth, looking like the most debauched of Renaissance paintings. The refilled water and folded clothes on the bedside table tells him his nap hasn't gone unchecked.

Groggily, he dresses. The shirt is a little tight (a different shirt from before) but the gray sweatpants are roomy; the fabric is soft against his stitches.

He wanders out of the bedroom, feeling a little like the undead, a staggering corpse from one of those zombie apocalypse shows. The layout of the rest of the apartment, from what he can see stepping out of Merlin's room, is simple. An open floor plan: basically, a combined living area and kitchen, separated by a quaint breakfast bar. There are plenty of things he doesn't notice just then (like the lone photograph of a dark-haired woman with her arms around a preteen boy, the potted plants hanging in front of the largest window for optimum light, the antique writing desk squished in the corner, the metal baskets of files upon files stacked on the side of the desk, the careful arrangement of marked tuppewares sitting on top of the kitchen cabinets, and other unimportant shit like backsplash and ceilings cracks and flooring) but what he doesn't miss are the books.

Like. A lot of books.

The majority of the living space is lined, wall-to-wall, with built-in bookcases, stuffed with knickknacks and doo-dads and, oh yeah, what seem to be hundreds of books. They range in size, cover, color, texture, subject, _language_ , and age, but for the most part they seem well-loved and well-preserved. Even with notes spilling out between the spines and pages, it's clear that someone has taken care of these shelves; he doesn't spot a speck of dust anywhere.

Disoriented, Gwaine moves to go back the way he came, thinking he might have accidentally stepped into a public library via magic door. (Renegade magical portals, as far as Gwaine can tell, are generally considered rumors, as he's only ever seen the American press take them seriously; but that doesn't mean that people on the streets don't wag their tongues, claiming they saw a cloaked figure pass through a brick wall or cement underpass support, so he supposes they could be real.)

Of course that's when Merlin emerges from the kitchen--earbuds hanging around his neck, hands decorated with suds from the sink--and spots him.

"You're up!"

Gwaine--who has never had a stranger be so happy to see him awake twice in one day--smiles.

"Don't worry," he says, "I'm not liable to die on you now."

"I hope not," Merlin says, leaning against the breakfast bar. "Not after I've invested some good needlework in you."

Gwaine huffs out a small laugh. He should probably sit down--he can already feel the strain standing is putting on his leg--but all he can think about is where Merlin stashed his shoes. He's about two seconds from asking (for a seat or his shoes, he can't say) when Merlin turns to rummage in one of the kitchen cabinets.

"Before I forget." He tosses Gwaine an orange and white bottle of pills, which Gwaine only narrowly misses. The bottle goes tumbling across the floor. "Sorry. Gaius prescribed them."

"The good stuff?" Gwaine jokes, something he regrets when a look of concern flickers over Merlin's face. "Sorry. I didn't mean--"

"Are you in pain?" Merlin asks.

Gwaine picks up the bottle. He doesn't recognize the name, so they're probably not pain meds. "No," he says.

It's true. For the most part, he's not in any sort of immediate pain. But even before he ran away, Gwaine cultivated a high tolerance for it, and he's trying not to focus on his leg too much, so for all he knows he could be. Mostly he feels sore, out of place and wanting--though wanting as in _lacking_ ; maybe it's the pain he's missing?

No, he thinks. That's goddamn stupid.

At any rate Merlin doesn't seem convinced. He prods for more information (literally and figuratively), and Gwaine answers as truthfully as he can. He tells him about the soreness, the fatigue--Merlin makes him sit down after admitting to weakness while standing--and that the greatest concentration of pain is the skin right around the wound.

"That's normal, for what you've been through," Merlin explains. "How do the bandages feel? Did you do them too loose, too tight?"

"Bandages?"

"After your shower. You did see them on the nightstand, right?"

He hadn't. After the shower, he saw the pillow and very little else.

Apparently, Merlin left them next to his clothes, which Gwaine missed, and ultimately this conversation ends with Gwaine pulling down his (Merlin's) sweatpants and waiting patiently while Merlin wraps gauze around his thigh. Like everything in the past few hours (or days, if he's being nitpicky), it's weird--but weird in the sense that Gwaine is far more aware and possibly freaked out that he's sitting in someone's _living room_ , on someone's secondhand, faintly floral and fading _couch_ , rather than the fact that he's doing all this half naked and injured. It's hard to ignore that he's in somebody's _honest-to-god home_ \--where they sleep and eat and do all the things Gwaine does but indoors--when Gwaine is scrunching his bare toes in the nice, patterned rug beneath the sofa, when the evidence of a life lived is on display in the scratches and nicks in the coffee table before him.

To compound that, someone is taking care of him. Not out of duty or to their own interest, but because he, Merlin, can.

It's... a lot.

Merlin finishes up. "Good. Even a stray fiber caught in the wound could cause infection," Merlin preaches, "and that'd be antithetical to the pills. Speaking of which, you should take those with food." Then: "Do you like any toppings on your pizza?"

Gwaine feels a little lightheaded. "Whatever," he says. He likes pineapple.

Merlin nods, pats his leg twice, and moves into the kitchen. "I'll get you some ice for the swelling."

About forty minutes later, Gwaine has consumed what he assumes to be a mountain of pizza and is gently corraled into Merlin's guest bedroom. Overall, it's a good turn of events: for one, he isn't being hoisted out the door; two, they don't have to discuss when he's being kicked out just yet. Win win.

(For now, he thinks, sinking into the mattress, completely unaware of how wrong he was.)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little things, big things, and Gwaine is tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, it's certainly been a while! I have excuses but i'm not going to use them because i feel guilty enough as it is. but i am sorry this took so long. i'm also sorry how slow of a burn this fic is turning out to be.
> 
> anyway, i want to apologize for arthur in this chapter. he's going to be kind of a dick, but he has his reasons! i promise. they'll be explored more in the next two chapters.
> 
> enjoy!

Gwaine is bedridden for a couple more days on Merlin's orders. Well, "bedridden" in the sense that he can walk around the flat for a couple of hours a day before passing out (sometimes haphazardly) on the sofa or in Merlin's bed. Maybe it's because he woke up there, but Gwaine keeps forgetting about the guest bedroom. (He really should ask Merlin why he settled Gwaine in his room instead of the extra when he was first brought here, but he wants to keep the mystery alive between them.) Merlin says he doesn't mind, as long as he's getting the rest he needs, and Gwaine brushes it off with a saucy wink.

Merlin sticks to his side for the next week. He almost wishes that Merlin would leave, so he can give Gwaine the space to sit and think and have a proper panic attack about what he's going _to do_. (Or get himself to do what he thinks he _should_.) But beyond some grocery shopping down the street or a trip to the basement laundry, Merlin doesn't venture far from Gwaine's sight. He seems, by nature, to be something of a mother hen.

Or maybe he's afraid of leaving Gwaine unsupervised. He catches Merlin watching him sometimes, anxiously looking over his shoulder when one of them moves or jumping if Gwaine pops into the living room unannounced. It could be that Merlin is unused to having guests, but the nagging little voice in the back of his head reminds him who the stranger is here.

He's probably worried about getting his stuff stolen, Gwaine thinks one afternoon, pouting slightly at his sandwich.

To be fair, it had crossed his mind a few times; he could put his sticky fingers to good use and dash out of the middle of the night. It would be easy. But he doesn't think he could bear taking more than a little food and a pair of borrowed clothes... not after everything Merlin has done for him. If he were some rich schmuck, maybe, but despite their vastly different circumstances, Merlin is still a hard-working fella. He doesn't say it but Gwaine can tell by the lovingly worn yet threadbare quality of his clothes, by the bare furnishings in his bedroom, by the free plastic novelty cups and Ramen noodle packets cluttering his cupboards, by the strain around his eyes when he talks about his mother's worsening knees or his student loans--Gwaine knows what it's like living paycheck to paycheck. He remembers his mother rationalizing small extravagances like movie tickets or weekly pizza nights while standing over pink-coloured heating bills, wondering just how cold the house would be in March without it.

Merlin smiles at him from across the breakfast bar.

No, he doesn't think he could take any more from Merlin than what he's already given him.

* * *

In between naps he and Merlin get to know each other. As best as two strangers, one of whom bled all over the other, can. Mostly that involves medical care but sometimes conversation.

Gwaine dodges the basic questions: where are you from, what do you do, where do you live, et cetera. Do you need to call anyone? That's one of the first asked and it's very popular. Gwaine answers the same way every time: no. He manages maybe one or two words about his family, mostly repeating the words "dead" and "dunno." It's a sore subject. Merlin backs off.

Instead, Merlin talks about his mother--Hunith--the dark haired woman in the framed photographs. From the stories he tells, Gwaine can only surmise that she's a saint. She raised a child all by herself with no help from the rest of the village. For the most part, as Merlin tells it, his mouth and chin dipped down, they were ostracized by the villagers. Not maliciously, except for one occasion in Merlin's teens when their house was egged and a small fire was set on their lawn, but the people of Ealdor kept their distance. He doesn't say why; Gwaine assumes it was because she was a single mother.

(This reminds him of his own mother and it burns him, like hot tea going down the wrong pipe.)

But, Merlin continues, she always kept her head up. Hunith worked full-time from home, homeschooling Merlin until he was about thirteen, worked part-time at the local market on weekends to make ends meet. Kept a beautiful garden--Merlin swipes through pictures on his phone, his eyes brightening with something other than the glow of the screen--and somehow still managed to corral a young delinquent.

" _You_ were a troublemaker?" Gwaine asks over breakfast on Tuesday morning. He ends up getting jam in his hair somehow and starts to suck it out before he realizes what he's doing. Merlin laughs.

"Well, I wasn't alone. My friend Will and I managed to piss off one of the villagers every other day." He sips his coffee, which he confesses to preferring over tea, more or less due to the caffeine boost. Not that Gwaine can talk, liking a stout drink himself over much else.

In retrospect, it makes sense; well-behaved kids don't jump headfirst into bar brawls.

He describes one incident in which he and Will managed to cause damage to two separate properties--the wreckage caused totaling to a tree, a fence, two lawns, and some shrubbery--all in about thirty seconds. This was done, apparently, while trying to save a stray cat from a tree, which was rotted to their later discovery (the tree, not the cat). The branch gave out from under their weight and, well, _crash_.

"Where did you land?"

"On the fence below. Mostly."

"Mostly?"  
  
Merlin snickers. "And in the prized rosebush of his nextdoor neighbor."

Gwaine inhales through his teeth.

"Yeah, ow. Luckily the branch and the fence protected us from most of the thorns," Merlin says, "but not from the neighbor."

"At least you got the cat?" Gwaine offers.

"Ha, yeah, no, not really."

"What happened to it?"

"Well, it did what it did best," Merlin replies. "It ran away."

Gwaine laughs, more of an exhale than anything, and returns to his toast.

* * *

Mostly he sleeps a lot--like a baby, a small helpless infant baby--but he does other things too. Like eat and shower and watch tv shows on Merlin's laptop and once help Merlin fold his laundry. Gwaine tries to be helpful as he can, what with his leg--

And a growing self-awareness of his intrusion and of his familiarity in Merlin's home.

* * *

Merlin catches Gwaine poking at his books--actually they belong to Gaius, as Merlin tells him, along with the rest of the apartment, which Gaius is leasing out to Merlin while he is away. Merlin is a little dodgy about just where that is, but it can't be far if he patched up Gwaine not even a week before.

He recommends some volumes. Gwaine reads a few chapters of a Cold War book before bed. It is by far the most luxurious routine he's had in years. Every night he limps to the spare bedroom and sinks into the mattress, book in hand, nightstand light on until the words start swimming before his eyes and he falls asleep.

He can feel himself becoming complacent--something that surprises him and he hasn't the energy to fight himself on it.

* * *

He tries once to bring up the elephant in the room with Merlin. The elephant being his rapidly healing leg. This usually leads to an impromptu changing of the gauze, and it never gets to where Gwaine is trying to go. He is half convinced that Merlin is purposefully avoiding the discussion, though he can't imagine why. It would be in Merlin's best interest to have the discussion, to finally say 'well, looks like your time here is up' and show him the door.

He chalks the delay up to Merlin being too polite, maybe fearing that Gwaine will ask to stay and he'll have to say no. That's fine, Gwaine can wait him out. Sooner or later, he'll want Gwaine gone; everyone gets sick of him eventually.

* * *

Things progress from there over the next week. Gwaine learns a bunch of minor things about Merlin. Like the fact that he has a knee-high crystal dragon statue in his closet (which, yeah, a bit weird, but Gwaine isn't judging; he suspects Merlin might have been big into DnD as a kid) or that he doesn't care for tomatoes (unless they're diced or in some sort of sauce). He speaks Welsh and a smattering of Gaelic. He went to medical school but quit after his first year, intending to take temporary break but never returning. He can read English from almost any time period, even the really old stuff that doesn't look like English. But as Gwaine discovers when peaking at Merlin's phone--just to check the time!--Merlin texts like the parody of a millennial running from a serial killer in a horror film franchise. Maybe with fewer emoticons.

He tries to avoid learning the big things about Merlin for the same reason someone might avoid naming an animal that they can't take care of or that they plan on eating one day. Not that he plans on doing either to Merlin, but _semantics_.

But there are some big things that can't be avoided.

* * *

On the sixth or seventh day at Merlin's place, depending on how he figures his time unconscious, someone with an unfortunate stomping habit tears into the flat.

It's not often but Gwaine sometimes has falling dreams. It sounds just like what it is: he dreams that he is falling but he wakes up seconds before hitting the ground. In the dream he feels mostly weightless, as if there was nothing more natural than hurtling towards the ground--but waking up is a whole 'nother tune. His body lags. It doesn't yet realize it was all a dream and for a few seconds, he keeps plummeting. Then bam! Heart pounding, he lands in bed, the least graceful Icarus to ever grace the skies.

Yeah, Friday morning was sort of like that.

The noise rips Gwaine out of dreamland. On high alert, he skitters from under the covers and out of the bed. Adrenaline tricks his bad leg into working properly, though he still manages to get the other one twisted in the sheets. Muffled voices argue on the other side of the door.

Before he can do it himself, the door opens--that's what doors do, most of the time, anyway--and in strolls what Gwaine can only assume is the poster boy for blonde-haired, blue-eyed rich boys with a smug sense of self-worth shoved up their collective arses.

Gwaine is _not_ a morning person.

"Who the hell are you?" blondie demands.

What Gwaine lacks in physical intimidation (still bleary-eyed and just barely untangled from his sheets) he makes up in the rough grate of his voice. "I could say the same thing, mate."

"Well, you're in my room, so I think I have a right to know first."

He's momentarily taken aback. But Gwaine is not, despite all appearances, an idiot; he's not going to take anything at face value. He looks past the intruder and sees Merlin hovering in the doorway, concerned but not frightened. More annoyed than anything. "This a friend of yours, Merlin?" he asks.

"No," blondie snaps just as Merlin sighs a heavy "yes."

They make faces at each other's answers.

"Gwaine," Merlin introduces, stepping between the two of them, "this is Arthur."

"His _boss_ ," this _Arthur_ clarifies.

Merlin makes a clucking sound with his tongue. "Technically," he says, pointing at Arthur, "your father pays me, so no, not my boss."

"But not your friend either?" Gwaine asks, halfheartedly folding his arms. It is difficult to looking intimidating when deeply confused.

"No," they insist, in unison, despite Arthur's earlier claim that they were _not_ friends.

It's been a while since Gwaine had a proper job, and even then it was basic stockroom stuff as a teenager, but he doesn't remember his employer ever bursting into his home and insisting he lived there.

"But you live here?" Gwaine tries again. Because why the hell not.

"No," they say. Again, in unison.

Ugh. That's why the hell not.

He sends Merlin a questioning look.

"When Gaius moved out, I started using his bedroom as a spare room for guests," Merlin explains, almost softly, to Gwaine. "Arthur likes to crash here a couple times a month whenever he has a falling out--"

"--Merlin--"

"--Sorry. A passive aggressive disagreement--"

Arthur swats Merlin's arm once, cutting him off. "That's quite enough, _Mer_ lin," he says.

For his part, Merlin has the decency to look somewhat sheepish. "Anyway, he leaves some of his stuff here and suddenly it's 'his room.'"

"It might as well be," Arthur says. "I pay you--"

"You don't."

"--you pay rent. I practically own this flat." Arthur tucks his hands into his no doubt expensive suit pants and rocks back on his heels. Throw some shoulder pads on him, and you have the picture of an American 80's movie villain.

Gwaine tells him so.

There aren't many laughs from the newcomer. _Good_ , Gwaine thinks.

"This is who you've been skipping work for?" Arthur rounds on Merlin, speaking as if Gwaine had suddenly dissipated into the air.

Merlin rolls his eyes. "I haven't been _skipping_ , you prat."

"You've been gone _a week_."

"I took time off--from the paid leave that I haven't touched, by the way, for the past _three years_."

"Don't play the martyr, Merlin, you've taken off work before."

"When I was sick!"

They bicker a little more, squabbling over what constitutes as a sick day and what doesn't, arguing about the time Merlin apparently got food poisoning instead of Arthur because he was stupid enough to accept food from one of his father's competitors, blah blah blah. Gwaine looks on; he can't tell if he's more amused at their back-and-forth or more annoyed with how carelessly he treats Merlin. At the same time, he can't deny that Merlin holds his own against Arthur, despite being his pseudo employee or whatever. He was on guard before, but now it just sounds more like friendly banter.

"You never needed your vacation days before."

"And why would I?" Merlin asks, sarcasm practically dripping from his mouth. "Every day with you is a beach."

Arthur scoffs. "Well, it looks like you're making a marvelous holiday of it, _Mer_ lin."

Gwaine doesn't miss the insinuating tone and neither, by the flush of his ears, does Merlin. "It's not like that," he says, avoiding Gwaine's eye. "Not that it's any of your business."

"Right," Arthur says flatly. "In my room, too."

He sniffs and then looks around, sneering slightly at the sight of the unmade bed--a bed that Gwaine would very much like to get back into now, please and thank you. Or at least sit down on. The adrenaline has officially fucked off from his system and its sudden departure has left him drained. The area around his wound throbs slightly, itchy. He scratches at the skin just below the edge of his bandages.

Arthur frowns, eyes zeroing in on Gwaine's fidgeting. "Right," he says again, this time knowingly. Yet he doesn't seem smug, if that's even possible for him, about knowing whatever it is he does. "Of course."

"What?" Gwaine asks, like an ass. Because he knows it's goading, but he falls for it anyway.

"Another one of your strays, Merlin?"

Ah, and the smugness returns.

"What?" he repeats, when what he really means is ' _Another one_?'

He looks to Merlin who, again, can't seem to meet his eyes.

Rule number one: never turn up your nose to charity. That was the first thing he learned when he started living on the street. If you can earn your keep, that's good, but pride doesn't fill an empty stomach. The second and most important rule is harder to remember, harder to tread over blurred lines, but it was something Gwaine learned over time: you're still human. No matter what degradation you face or difficult choices you make to survive, you are _no one's pet_.

"What happened? Accident? Mugging?" Arthur guesses. His eyes narrow, and Gwaine realizes Arthur's much sharper than he gave him credit. "Was it a fight?"

Merlin hesitates and Gwaine knows that's answer enough.

Gwaine hears his own voice speaking. "Merlin patched me up because I asked him to. He's been letting me stay while I'm on the mend."

"What about your place?" Arthur asks, this time less patiently.

" _Arthur_." The word is terse in Merlin's mouth, like he's using only his teeth to say it. Like he's trying to communicate something he can't say aloud.

... _Goddamnit_ , Gwaine thinks, wearily. Because he hoped maybe Merlin missed all of the signs, maybe he waved away all of his concerns and suspicions, or maybe he is just as trusting as he seems--but he was wrong.

"Gwaine saved my life," Merlin says, trying to salvage the situation.

Arthur's mouth twists, like he can't decide what to address first. It reminds Gwaine of a flustered muppet. "And what were you doing that almost got you _killed_?"

"It doesn't matter--"  
  
"--What are you--of course it does, Merlin!" Arthur exclaims. It's the first genuine emotion Gwaine thinks he's heard from Arthur.

Granted, he just met the bloke a few minutes ago, but by Merlin's silence he doesn't think it happens too often.

"Of course, it does," he says again. He leans in, talking quieter and faster than before. If he's trying to whisper, he's miserable at it. "But that doesn't change the fact that he's a total stranger."

Gwaine finally sits down. He thinks about cracking a joke, maybe asking if they're talking about him, which they obviously are, but he doesn't. The mattress compresses beneath him, as if he's heavier somehow.

Merlin shrugs. "He's Gwaine."

"That doesn't mean anything."

Merlin shrugs again. He says something that Gwaine doesn't catch. Merlin is _much_ better at whispering.

But then his voice pipes up once more: "Helping him recover is the least I could do."

Merlin looks at Gwaine when he says _least_. It's as if the word shrinks Gwaine; he suddenly feels so small, sitting on the bed. The room, before a comfort, feels smaller too, pressing against his back and shoulders. He's tired, but for the first time in days all he really wants to do is run.


End file.
